What is Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana?

With the slogan "Mera Khata - Bhagya Vidhaata" The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana scheme is an ambitious financial inclusion scheme covering all households in the country with banking facilities, ensuring a bank account for each household.

* The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana is an ambitious scheme that will provide a many benefits including a bank account, insurance and a debit card for all. * It is a mega financial inclusion plan under which bank accounts and RuPay debit cards with inbuilt insurance cover of Rs 1 lakh will be provided to crores of persons with no access to formal banking facilities. * The ambitious scheme aims to bring poor people into the ambit of the Government's financial programme. It will cover both urban and rural areas and those who open account would get Domestic Debit Card (Ru-pay card). * The long term vision of the Jan Dhan Yojana is to lay the foundation of a cashless economy and is complementary to Narendra Modi's Digital India Scheme.

It’s aim:

* The scheme intends to accomplish the objective of housing for all by providing basic banking accounts with a debit card with inbuilt accident insurance. * The government aims to open as many as 1 crore bank accounts on the first day itself. * The main features of the PMJDY scheme include Rs 5,000 overdraft facility for Aadhar-linked accounts. * RuPay Debit Card with inbuilt Rs 1 lakh accident insurance cover. * One of the salient features of this scheme is that after remaining active for 6 months the account holder will become eligible for an overdraft of up to Rs 2,500. * This will further be enhanced by the bank to Rs 5000 over time. * The PMJDY has set an ambitious target of bringing in more than 7.5 crore un-banked families into India's banking system by opening more than 15 Crore bank accounts (two bank accounts per household).

Two phases of the scheme:

* The first phase of the mission, starting this month, would end in August next year. * Phase-1 of PMJDY begins on the August 28, 2014 and will last until August 14, 2015. * The first phase will be focused on opening a bank account and providing credit facilities to those who are outside the banking system in urban and rural India. * The second phase will start from 2015 till 2018. * It will cover aspects such as micro insurance and pension schemes like 'Swavalamban'.

It is expected that more than 60,000 enrollment camps will be held in rural and urban areas of the country to open new bank accounts in the coming weeks. The idea behind this massive mobilization is to generate a buzz around the whole scheme, so that people eventually start demanding a bank account.